Tagged With acma

The 3.6 GHz band is talked about as where our 5G network will live in the future - but it's not a done and dusted deal. There are existing services using this frequency that want to stay in business, after all.

So the Australian Communications and Media Authority is opening the doors for community and industry consultation on the band's usage.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has directed mobile service provider Lycamobile Pty Ltd to comply with the Telecommunications Consumer Protections (TCP) Code following a complaints-handling investigation. It turns out Lycamobile hasn't been keeping records of due response dates for its complaints. In some cases the telco didn't advise customers of delays in dealing with their complaints, or keep records of proposed resolutions.

The results of the Federal Government's recent auction of a large chunk of the 1800MHz band of the Australian radiofrequency spectrum have been announced: Telstra and Optus each spent nearly $200 million on securing more bandwidth, while TPG and Vodafone also splashed out with multi-million dollar investments. The 2015 auction should see Australia's 4G networks in regional areas get faster and cover wider areas.

Other than waving your phone in the air like a Star Trek tricorder, there's not much you can do if you're getting poor reception on your phone. In metropolitan areas, it's a brief annoyance, but head out to more rural locations and crappy signals are a way of life. Consumer-level signal boosters can provide some relief, however, not only are they illegal in Australia, but selfish to use, killing reception for other nearby users.

Well, this seems overdue. While some mobile providers have long offered free calls to 13, 1300 and 1800 numbers, in their plans, many others haven't. Regulator the Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA) had originally planned to introduce legislation in January 2015 making fee-free calls compulsory, but now the major telcos have agreed to make at least some of those calls free ahead of that deadline.

So here's a concrete example of how data charges are still a problem: the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has issued a formal warning to frequently-troubled provider Dodo for failing to send data usage alerts to its customers.

A con man targeting unsuspecting Windows users and holding their computers hostage online has been fined and given a suspended jail sentence in Britain. The scammer's outsourced Indian telemarketing workers called random phone numbers, convinced people their PCs were virus-laden and charged for antivirus software that Microsoft offers for free.

Anyone who has ever had a mobile phone service in this country — be it pre- or post-paid — has a bad experience to share. Bill shock, bad service, crappy coverage: we've seen it all. But there's one overarching problem that is more significant than all of those combined: the idea of "the average customer".

An international operation four years in the making between Australian, North American and Canadian authorities has taken down one of the world's largest — and coincidentally most annoying — fraud groups: the infamous phone scammers posing as Microsoft tech support employees. Here's how it all went down.

Australia and New Zealand often boast of their close relationship, but if you use a mobile phone from Australia in New Zealand or vice versa, you'll pay the same ludicrous roaming charges that apply to countries on the other side of the world. A joint government investigation which began back in May 2010 has finally issued a draft report, but all we're going to get from it is a direction to make pricing clearer. Fat lot of help that is.

New research from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has found that 99 per cent of Australian households own a television, meaning there's still one per cent of you that don't have one. What gives?

Looks like Channel 9's mooted 3D Olympics channel will be happening — but not across the entire nation. The Australian Communications and Media Authority has given approval for Channel 9 to broadcast the Olympics in 3D in Adelaide, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney.

The ACMA has published and is starting to publicise Optus' undertaking in regards to its telemarketing activities, some of which were a bit on the annoying side. I can say that personally; the letter the ACMA sent me after a complaint is after the jump.

Hands up if you work in a call centre? Two hands up if it's for a telco. I feel your pain. I've had sojourns at both One.Tel and Vodafone in the past (yeah, I should stick to writing). It's tough navigating issues from the inside, let alone as a customer — which is why I'm not shocked by new data released by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) today. For instance, 39 per cent of the 516 customers surveyed tried more than 6 times to resolve issues, and around 20 per cent spent over 9 hours doing so.

Back in May, the Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA) drafted a report that called for telcos to lift their game. Recommendations included ending advertising with misleading terms like cap or free, and notifying you when you've hit a certain amount of usage. The response submitted by the telcos was released this week, and included fun tidbits like "providing more information about telephone pricing and plans would only confuse consumers."